ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for a researcher in the NLP & Speech Group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

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ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for an NLP research scientist in the NLP and Speech group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for an NLP research scientist in the NLP and Speech group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Provide scientific and technical skills in conceptualizing, designing, obtaining support for, conducting, managing, and disseminating results of research projects in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), or portions of large-scale research studies or programs in the same field.

Develop and/or modify NLP theories to conceptualize and implement new capabilities in automated scoring and NLP systems which are used to improve assessments, learning tools and test development practices.

Apply scientific, technical and software engineering skills in designing and conducting research studies and capability development in support of educational products and services.

Develop and oversee the conduct of selected portions of research proposals and project budgets.

Design and conduct complex scientific studies functioning as an expert in major facets of the projects.

Assist in the conduct of research projects by accomplishing directed tasks according to schedule and within budget.

Participate in dissemination activities through the publications of research papers, progress and technical reports, the presentation of seminars or other appropriate communication vehicles.

Develop professional relationships as a representative, consultant or advisor to external advisory and policy boards and councils, research organizations, educational institutions and educators.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with strong emphasis on NLP technology and preferably some education in linguistics is required.

EXPERIENCE

Evidence of substantive research experience and/or experience in developing and deploying NLP capabilities is required. Demonstrable contributions to new and/or modified theories of NLP and their implementation in automated systems are required. Demonstrable and practical expertise with NLP tools and fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g. java, perl, c/c++, python) is also required. Familiarity with the application of NLP tools to educational problems, and a very strong statistical background and a solid experience with machine learning algorithms would be an asset.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for a researcher in the NLP & Speech Group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Assist in the implementation of speech technology and natural language processing (NLP) components of medium- to large-scale, complex research projects for ETS researchers, testing program areas, and external clients. Consult with research scientists in the application, modification, and documentation of such systems using established technologies.

Work effectively in a team setting and take an active role in contributing to team discussions and decisions.

Analyze, design, modify, develop, document and implement technologies for executing medium- to large-scale, complex Speech technology and NLP research and development tasks. Identify unexpected problems in the application of Speech and NLP tools, and develop solutions.

Consult with research supervisory staff on the development of technologies for executing medium- to large-scale, complex Speech technology and NLP research and development tasks. Contribute to the implementation and support of new Speech and NLP methodologies to support research system development.

Assist in the preparation of NLP development components of proposals and cost/resource estimates.

EDUCATION
A Masters degree in Computer Science, NLP, Language Technology, Computational Linguistics, Linguistics or a closely related field is required.

EXPERIENCE

A strong programming background, in languages such as Java, Python, Perl, and C, and facility with computational algorithms are essential. Coursework in statistics and experience in using machine learning toolkits are highly desirable. Experience with speech processing software (e.g. HTK, Praat, Matlab) is desirable.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

Knowledge of UNIX and Windows computing environments.

Familiarity with UNIX tools and scripting languages.

Familiarity with algorithms, methods and data structures in common use in the processing of speech and language data.

Excellent verbal and written communication.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

Strong ability to work independently and drive an original research agenda

Deadline: June 15, 2012

Date Posted: May 14, 2012

Contact: harald.trost@ofai.at

The Language Technology group at the OFAI, Vienna, is looking for a motivated post-doctoral researcher or a well experienced graduate student to fill a research position within the basic research project "Machine Learning Techniques for Modeling of Language Varieties".

The position involves basic research on issues related to data sparsity in machine translation between non-central language pairs. In particular, morphological closeness shall be exploited and bootstrapping methods shall be employed to counter the data sparsity. Further information is available at http://varieties.ofai.at.

A basic gross salary of EUR 40,000-45,000 per anno will be offered depending on the experience of the candidate.

OFAI encourages its researchers to publish results in the top venues (ACL, EMNLP, etc.) and provides travel funding towards this end.

Please send your applications, including a CV and a brief research statement, to Harald Trost <harald.trost@ofai.at>. The position is to be filled as soon as possible, not later than September 1st, 2012, and will terminate with the end of the project (December 31st, 2013).

About the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI): Founded in 1984, OFAI is one of Europe's leading non-profit research institutions in AI. Further information is available at http://www.ofai.at.

About Vienna: Vienna is the Austrian capital and consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world. At over 1,600,000 inhabitants, Vienna is one of the largest cities in the central European region and home to numerous universities and research institutions, providing an intellectually stimulating environment.

The Cluster of Excellence "Multimodal Computing and Interaction" at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany, seeks applications for a number of new Junior Research Group Leader positions. The Cluster provides a highly interdisciplinary research environment with a strong Computational Linguistics component. One of the Cluster's central research areas is 'Speech and Language Processing'. Group leaders will receive junior faculty status at Saarland University, including the right to supervise Bachelor, Master and PhD students. Junior research groups are equipped with a budget of 80k to 100k Euros per year to cover research personnel and other costs.

Research and Development Opportunities for Next Generation Technology at Microsoft

Do you want to impact billions of people all over the world with speech technology that you create?

We are looking for PhD level scientists and senior scientists, who will work on research and development problems in statistical machine translation. The candidates with experience in large-scale syntax-based statistical machine translation,
weighted finite state transducers, natural language processing and machine learning will be preferred.

Microsoft is all-in on the Natural User Interface to bring computing to larger audiences in more applications. To drive this mission we are bringing together scientists and engineers in the areas of machine translation, speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialog modeling, machine learning and synthesis to develop and deliver robust, natural and scalable solutions across a rich set of scenarios and languages.

Join the excitement to be part of the newly formed team of scientists within Microsoft and to impact the lives of billions of people all over the world. We are talking about Bing, Windows, XBOX, Mobile, Exchange Server and Tellme, just to name a few. Microsoft is dedicated to improving everyday life using speech. And not just in a few countries - but around the world.

Reasoning about Agent's Mental States in Dialog and Joint Activity (CMU Silicon Valley)

Employer: Inst. for the Study of Learning and Expertise at CMU Silicon Valley

An ongoing project has an opening for a researcher who will help extend
Icarus, a cognitive architecture, to reason about other agents' mental
states in the context of dialogues and joint activities. The framework
uses a logical formalism to encode knowledge, beliefs, and goals, and
it relies on a form of abduction to make plausible inferences. Experience
in building reasoning systems that operate over rich representations is
essential, and a background in applied logic, knowledge-based systems,
and/or cognitive architectures is highly desirable.

The location of the project will be Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley
Campus. The start date is negotiable, but the position will be available
on May 1, 2012, and the project has funding for another two years.
Interested parties should send their curriculum vitae, along with
the contact details for two or more references, to Pat Langley
<patrick.w.langley@gmail.com>.

The Illinois Institute of Technology Department of Computer Science in Chicago, IL is delighted to announce an opening for a Postdoctoral Research Associate, for a recent Ph.D. in computer science, computational linguistics, or related areas. We seek applicants to work with Prof. Shlomo Argamon in the Linguistic Cognition Laboratory, the PI of a federally-funded project to identify and analyze metaphors in multiple languages.

The ideal candidate will have a scholarly understanding of computational linguistics and metaphor, be an excellent programmer, and be comfortable with technologies for the analysis of big data. The postdoc will: (a) support development of automated language analysis and text mining for metaphor identification and analysis, (b) help manage the work of graduate research assistants on the project, (c) aid in developing research publications and external funding proposals, and (d) support other research and administration activities in the project.

Applicants from all areas relevant to the research are encouraged to apply. In addition to the core area of computational linguistics, training in machine learning, statistical analysis, and information retrieval will be helpful. Knowledge of Spanish, Russian, or Farsi is also a plus.

The position includes a competitive salary plus benefits. It will run through the end of 2012, beginning as soon as possible, with the possibility of a one-year renewal upon satisfactory performance and continued funding.

Interested candidates should apply via email to Dr. Shlomo Argamon (argamon@iit.edu). Applications should include a CV with cover letter, including the names of three references, giving contact information (email address and phone number) and relationship to the candidate for each reference. Inquiries can similarly be directed to the above email address. Prior to hiring, successful applicants will be required to submit either a transcript/diploma showing the date of an earned Ph.D. degree or a letter from their academic adviser confirming the expectation of the degree by May 2012.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled.

Post-doctoral position within the area of automatic text summarization at Google Zurich, Switzerland

A post-doctoral position in the area of automatic text summarization
within the RENDER project is available at the Google Switzerland R&D
office. RENDER is a EU FP7 research project focused on identifying
diversity of opinions, viewpoints, mindsets and backgrounds in texts
from different sources: news, (micro) blog streams, and in
collaboratively written resources like Wikipedia. More information on
the project goals is available at http://render-project.eu/.

The duration of the post-doctoral contract will be one year, with the
possibility of renewing for a second year. This position will allow
the candidate to perform research on several NLP-related areas,
to interact with the consortium partners and with other Google-internal
research and development projects, and to apply the results of the
research to real applications with a potentially large impact.

Requirements:

The candidate should have a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics or Information Retrieval. Experience with automatic text summarization, machine learning or opinion mining is a plus.

Extensive programming experience in C/C++.

A solid foundation in computer science, with strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design.

Applications are invited for 4 PhD fellowships in the area of statistical spoken dialogue systems funded by the Czech Government. The students will join the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic with an anticipated start date of October 1st, 2012.

Topic description: In recent years, it has been suggested that statistical approach to spoken dialogue system offer a framework to naturally handle inherent uncertainty in the human speech. The two main advantages of statistical methods are increased robustness in noisy conditions and more natural behaviour learned from data. However, the current methods need large corpora effectively preventing these methods to be used for complex dialogue systems occurring in real-life. The successful PhD candidates will investigate and implement statistical models and methods with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the learning process and reducing the need for large corpora. The conducted research will cover areas of spoken language understanding, dialogue management, and natural language processing.

Skills: Candidates should hold a master degree in a relevant area, such as computer science, mathematics, engineering or linguistics. A strong mathematical background, excellent programming skills (e.g. C/C++, Java, MATLAB, and various scripting languages under Linux environment), aptitude for creative research and autonomy are expected. Experience in machine learning, Bayesian methods, and natural language processing is a plus.

The Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics is a top-level research group working in the area of computational linguistics and natural language processing. During the fellowship, there will be good opportunities to attend international conferences and workshops. The formal applications should be submitted before June 1. Prospective candidates are strongly encouraged to contact Dr Filip Jurcicek (jurcicek@ufal.mff.cuni.cz) as soon as possible to obtain details about the application process, the institute, and the research opportunities.
Additional information is available at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/~jurcicek/jobs.

Data2Text is a spinout from the University of Aberdeen's Natural Language Generation (NLG)
research group. We are looking to hire several people; please see our website for details
http://www.data2text.com/careers

This is a great opportunity for people who are keen on getting NLG technology
out into the real world. In addition to the advertised positions, we're happy to talk
to people who are knowledgeable about NLG and keen to develop commercial applications,
but whose profiles do not fit the advertised positions.

Information inquiries (from the ACL community) should be sent to Ehud Reiter
(e.reiter@abdn.ac.uk or ehud.reiter@data2text.com)

In the context of the COMMIT project Information Retrieval for Information Services (COMMIT/Infiniti http://www.project-infiniti.nl/), applications are invited for a PhD student position. The research task will be to investigate the Mining of Economic Entities. As currently people easily share their sentiment regarding companies and products, reputation modeling has become increasingly important for commercial and non-commercial organisations. Due to the huge amount of opinions available through the Web, a manual approach for social media analysis for sentiment mining seems unfeasible, while there seems to be a huge potential for content-driven automated approaches. Through the mining of economic entities and the aggregated sentiment based on textual data, the aim is to support decisions on, e.g., product developments, marketing campaigns, etc. The envisaged prototype for a decision support tool will act as an indicator of public sentiment and trends. In addition, the variation in the dynamics of opinion forming for diverging domains such as economic news, political sentiment, and sentiment towards historical events will be studied.
The PhD track is embedded in the work of the EUR team working on the Infiniti project (Erasmus School of Economics/Econometric Institute/ Computer Science Group and Erasmus Studio) and the student will be able to collaborate on related topics with PhD students and researchers from other organizations participating in COMMIT.

Applications are invited for a PhD-student in the FACT project (Folktales As Classifiable Texts), funded under the CATCH programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This is a multidisciplinary research project involving collaboration between computer science and humanities researchers. The PhD-student will work on automatic classification of Dutch folktales by their international folktale type and on unsupervised clustering of folktales, to provide new input for humanities research. For this position, familiarity with the Dutch language is a plus.

The PhD-student will be employed at the University of Twente, but will spend most of his/her time "on site" at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam (http://www.meertens.knaw.nl), which maintains a large collection of Dutch folktales (http://www.verhalenbank.nl). The PhD-student will be part of a larger team within the e-Laboratory on Oral Culture at the Meertens Institute.

Educational Testing Service has an opening for a Research Associate position in the Research Coordination and Support Group. The successful candidate will primarily provide support to Research Scientists working on a branch of computer science and computational linguistics known as Natural Language Processing (NLP) by assisting in the management of resources across numerous projects, leading communication efforts both internally and externally, and participating in all phases of research projects, including research design, project management, data collection and analysis. He or she will also collaborate with researchers in responding to external requests for information, external grant applications, and in preparing study results for publication or presentation.

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Provide full professional support to and collaborate with a Director of Research; Senior Research Scientists; and Research Scientists.

Participate in planning, management, and design of research. Serve as co-investigator in research areas; collaborate on research projects.

Monitor collection and quality of data; provide comprehensive review of data collected from field sites to ensure completeness and accuracy; oversee entry of data for computer analysis.

Design original research instruments and methods and applications of research.

Write, rewrite, and edit proposals, professional reports, research instruments, books (or sections thereof), speeches, handbooks, research articles, and correspondence. Specifically, develop standardized materials such as PowerPoint slides, capability descriptions, and research study templates for use in communicating about automated scoring capabilities; develop boilerplate text for external audiences and proposals; and craft proposal text on demand, based on existing standard materials and input from automated scoring researchers.

Conduct or assist in direction and management of research projects. Conduct research of his or her own design, under general oversight of assigned supervisor. Manage resources across a wide-range of studies designed to support or enhance automated scoring technologies. Recruit and hire field staff; develop and monitor project budgets; coordinate and supervise field staff and consultants.

Conduct literature searches; review current research on research models and methods; review and evaluate ongoing developments in automated scoring research; and evaluate evolving business needs. Perform independent analyses of information by reading, summarizing, and evaluating it preliminary to undertaking research. Update standard materials as needed, based on new developments in research or external conditions.

Provide training and consultation on computer and systems applications, including customized annotation systems. Train and instruct staff on methods and procedures for annotation, data presentation, and explain methods of implementation to technical staff.

Contact, establish, and develop relationships with research community and with data sources.

Arrange and attend conferences and meetings; present research findings at professional meetings.

The successful candidate will have four years of progressively responsible research experience in linguistics or natural language processing. Candidates must demonstrate the ability to craft high-quality written communications for technical and non-technical audiences and have experience managing a large number of concurrent projects.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

HRL Laboratories, LLC. (http://www.hrl.com) has openings for a postdoctoral researcher position in the area of social media analysis / data mining. HRL laboratories is one of the most innovative research organizations in industry. Overlooking the pacific ocean in the hills above Malibu, California, our beautiful surroundings are matched by our capabilities and commitment to being a world-class research and development lab. We collaborate with top researchers in academia to advance the fields of information and systems sciences, sensors and materials, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. Please visit http://www.hrl.com/careers/cars_jobs.html for more information.
For job considerations, please send your cover letter and CV to hmoon@hrl.com.

EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Research experience in one or more of the following areas: Text processing, sentiment analysis, data mining, web & social media processing, large-scale data processing, and machine learning. Experience developing innovative solutions based upon the application of relevant research results from a wide variety of sources.

KNOWLEDGE DESIRED: Background in one or more of the following areas: natural language processing, social network analysis, statistical analysis, data mining, strong programming skills, particularly proficient with C/C++, Java, R and/or Matlab. Experience with MapReduce or Hadoop, and proficiency in Spanish/Portuguese language is a plus.

ESSENTIAL PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS: Good communication (verbal and written) skills, active participation in R&D team activities is required. Able and willing to occasionally travel.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS (e.g. driver’s license, special tools or restrictions): U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status required.

We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing.

Postdoc Position at Aberdeen University

Employer: University of Aberdeen

Rank: Post-doctoral Research fellow

Speciality: Intelligent Language/Multimodal Interfaces

Location: Aberdeen, UK

Deadline: 10-Feb-2012

Date Posted: 19-Jan-2012

Contact email: yaji.sripada@abdn.ac.uk

Digital Economy is an RCUK cross-council programme, aimed at realising the transformational impact of ICT for all aspects of business, society and economy. The dot.rural Digital Economy Hub at the University of Aberdeen is one of three large multi-disciplinary research hubs funded through this programme, and commenced its activities in October 2009.
The Hub award to Aberdeen is worth £11.8M and will fund five years of activity. The Hub brings together a large team of researchers (70+) working in and across the disciplines of computer science, communications engineering, transport, health, social sciences and environmental sciences. For further details, see: www.dotrural.ac.uk
To support our ambitious research programme we are looking to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow to work in the area of intelligent language/ multimodal interfaces. The Research Fellow will help develop and be responsible for natural language generation (NLG) based and other creative forms of on-line communication in a research project on effective communication of river water levels to the public, as well as contributing to interfaces of similar kinds needed for other projects related to natural resource conservation.
The successful candidate will have a good knowledge of natural language processing techniques or multimodal interfaces (at the PhD level). They will have some knowledge of NLG and a desire to learn more. The candidate will have a PhD or be about to complete a PhD in Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence or a relevant discipline. Enthusiasm for digital technology and innovation relevant to society and the economy is essential as is the ability to work in a cross-disciplinary team including colleagues in computer science and engineering. The ability to use GIS would be an advantage.
As this post is externally funded it is available for a period of 2.5 years.

About Us
IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities.
Researchers at IHMC pioneer technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. These systems fit the human and machine components together in ways that exploit their respective strengths and mitigate their respective weaknesses. The design and fit of computational prostheses require a broader interdisciplinary range than is typically found in one organization, thus IHMC staff includes computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, philosophers, engineers and social scientists of various stripes, as well as some researchers who resist all attempts to classify them.
Current active research areas include: knowledge modeling and sharing, adjustable autonomy, robotics, advanced interfaces and displays, communication and collaboration, computer-mediated learning systems, intelligent data and language understanding, software agents, expertise studies, work practice simulation, knowledge representation, and other related areas.
IHMC faculty and staff collaborate extensively with industry and government to develop science and technology that can be enabling with respect to society's broader goals. IHMC researchers receive funding (current funding in force exceeds $25,000,000) from a wide range of government and private sources. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, NIH, DOT, IDEO, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Boeing, Lockheed, and SAIC, among others.

The candidate will be appointed on a new US Government project on metaphor detection and understanding, due to start in the coming months and run for up to five years. Ocala, Florida is an excellent location, close to Florida’s major university and about an hour from both coasts. IHMC is housed in an excellent, state of the art building in the city center.

The Department of Computer Science at Queens College of The City University of New York (CUNY) is pleased to announce a visiting faculty position for academic year 2012-2013, beginning September 1. This is a research-focused temporary position, and we encourage applications from candidates with a successful publication history in machine translation, speech recognition, or other research areas of natural language processing or machine learning.

Both junior and senior researchers are encouraged to apply; compensation and title are commensurate with qualifications and experience. Candidates are expected to collaborate with members of our current faculty in computational linguistics -- either on existing research projects or on new joint endeavors. If interested in teaching experience, the visiting faculty member is also invited to teach one course on a topic closely related to his or her research specialty.

The department's computational linguistics faculty, which include two current NSF CAREER Award winners, participate actively in the Ph.D. programs in computer science and linguistics, based at CUNY Graduate Center. These faculty members have active research grants from the NSF, DARPA, the Army Research Lab, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. More information about the growing research community in computational linguistics across CUNY is available on this website: http://nlpatcuny.cs.qc.cuny.edu/

Qualifying candidates must have an earned Ph.D. by August 2012 in computer science, linguistics, or a closely related field, with a demonstrated research record in the areas listed above. Also required are the ability to work with Ph.D. students, interest in productive scholarship, teaching and communication skills, and ability to cooperate with others for the good of the institution.

Candidates should submit a letter of application detailing their teaching, research, and grant writing interests and experience, and a curriculum vitae to:

Dr. Matt Huenerfauth, Search Committee Chair

Department of Computer Science

Queens College-CUNY

65-30 Kissena Blvd.

Flushing, New York 11365-1597

matthew.huenerfauth (at) qc.cuny.edu

Email submissions with PDF attachments are preferred. In addition, please arrange for three current letters of reference to be submitted directly by the recommenders. Review of applications will begin on March 1, 2012, and will continue until the position is filled.

CUNY offers a comprehensive benefits package to employees and eligible dependents based on job title and classification. We are committed to enhancing our diverse academic community by actively encouraging people with disabilities, minorities, veterans, and women to apply. We take pride in our pluralistic community and continue to seek excellence through diversity and inclusion. EO/AA Employer.